ain't nobody that can sing like me
by sexyvanillatiger
Summary: Finding him was the easy part; Dean/Adam-ish. Sam. Implied angels.


Something that looks like a vulture sits on a low branch. The sky hangs heavy but the clouds are iridescent and white with the sun's love, so it's difficult to discern the figure from the scraggly angles of bare tree limbs and the twigs that lurch forth from them. The hill, itself, seems colorless and without shape but for that lone tree, and Dean is intent on speeding past it while Sam sleeps with his head propped against the window. It's just another bird, waiting patiently for the imminent and still unfortunate death of whatever it hopes to breakfast upon. Perhaps waiting to see it's prey frozen to death, though no snow is settled on the grass; winter in the air snips like chilled scissors.

But the vulture kicks down a leg and Dean's perception of this thing on a tree limb goes belly-up and he swerves into an empty parking lot, almost hitting a sign proclaiming the land Our Lady Sorrows Hill. The thing's head rises and it becomes unmistakably human. Familiar, almost. Falling, in the end.

Sam is awake and shouting at him when he throws himself out of the Impala, stumbling to his feet and for some reason, impulsively drawing himself up the hill. Whoever it is, they're sprawled on the ground, and it's not until Dean is at the kid's side that the details in his face are revealed by the morning's grim light; the pale skin, dark eye-circles, long fingers curled in an almost quiet way, as though he had considered grabbing for purchase on the tree before falling. His eyes are closed, but Dean knows exactly how blue they would be if they weren't.

"Adam," he can barely breathe. "Adam," and this time, he laughs it out, short bursts of breath hardly doing justice to the insane relief he feels in that moment.

Adam.

In the grass before him. Looking only asleep and possibly breathing, pulse present and Dean's fingers tingle when they find it. Sam at his side is hesitant, but Dean can see that his breast, too, rises and falls in a rhythm that they've long since forgotten they needed. The one that used to beat family in every breath. One that seemed to settle when they had Adam back from the dead, Adam-Adam, and the one that left them both hollowly scrambling for solid ground on the well-charted pastures of loss when he was left behind.

Dean is beyond caring how he got back right now. Sam, still seeming to clumsily dance his logic around this or at least not letting it sink in enough to approach, folds his arms over his chest. "It can't be him." His voice sounds like rust and Dean waves him off, sitting back on his haunches and looking up into the sky, into Sam's face.

"Why not?" He doesn't bother with the rhetoric of Who could it be, then, Sam? because it is unmistakably their brother. He yanks him up off the grass, tossing him over his shoulder and the cupid bow of Adam's lips part, breath falling like arrows shot into their hearts and Dean slides his way down the hill back to the Impala.

"What if it's not Adam? What if it's something else?" Sam is at his heels, holding Adam's wrist, stilling his brothers both. Leviathan, they think simultaneously.

"You don't know?"

Because Dean, for as little as he's known Adam, reads this on his heartbeat like third graders read Dick and Jane. Like old news and everpresent, so the ludicrous notion glaring through Sam's hesitation that he's wrong, that they haven't found Adam and he isn't really breathing slow against his shoulder? It holds him only as well as rusty chains.

Sam looks down and doesn't release Adam's wrist. "No, Dean. I do, I just..." Sam throws his arm back, fingers stretched wide and encompassing the hill behind them, the long road home, the flat horizon and that one hill with the one tree and no cars; Dean takes a sharp breath. "What was he doing here? Why was he sitting in a tree? Where are Michael and Lucifer? Dean, there's so much wrong with this. Can't you be a little more careful?"

But Dean is already pulling Adam's wrist from Sam's hand and situating their youngest brother in the backseat of the car. Arms crossed, lying on his left side, lying facing the front seats. "Shut up and let him sleep." Dean's words aren't forceful or commanding the way Sam would expect them. They're just as confused but eager in a way that they've both been anticipating for a very long time now. "You remember last weekend."

Sam looks up and then shakes his head. "It was a demon, Dean. Why would he...this doesn't make any sense. You haven't thought any of this through, and you could be putting something in there with us that's going to try to kill us later. You don't know."

Dean shakes his head. "It said we would find what we weren't looking for." The words are painful because they had both long abandoned the search for their youngest brother, content within the small shroud of their own lives dangling by the thread of their own undone deeds. Maybe, Sam fancies, Dean is so complacent with this casual discovery because this is the first time in months that he's felt like he has standing ground.

With that, Sam goes without a word. Back into the Impala, back into the stony horizon before them until the sun falls and Dean sags against the wheel and Sam reaches over to steer them into a hotel parking lot. Adam hasn't woken once, and both of their hearts beat loud in their stomaches, loud in their fingers, thunder in their ears as the realization settles like thin rain over them: the demon had never mentioned the condition in which they would find this thing they were not looking for.

Dean still insists that he carries him. "You just go and pay for the room," he mutters with little conviction. When Sam returns with their hotel keys, Dean dips his hands beneath their brother's still body and hoists him up, hugs him close to his chest and lets Sam lead the way in.

"Adam, if you can hear me, wake up." It's late when Sam hears it, but he knew that it would be a long night for both of them. He just didn't expect to doze so early, and now, waking up is unfortunate and difficult. He turns his head just enough to look at Adam's bed and sees the hunched form of his brother with his hand touching Adam's shoulder, looking like he wants to reach higher, wants to take his face and coax him out of this supposed slumber. They've refused to call it anything else.

"Adam, please, it's Dean. Me and Sam, we're here. We just want to know you're alright."

"Dean." Sam rolls over and sits up, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. Dean's shoulders tense and he leans further over Adam's bed.

"I didn't meant to wake you up." I meant to wake him up trickles silently between his words.

"I know. C'mon, he'll wake up on his own. You need sleep; it's been a long day and it'll be a long day tomorrow. Just—"

"Sammy, I know." Sam presses no further. Dean's voice is broken and tired and he doesn't sound like he can handle the weight of an argument right now, so Sam just takes the thick blanket on top and drapes it luxuriously over his brother's shoulders before returning to bed and sinking hesitantly back into the warm comfort of his sleep.

Sam wakes to something feeling different. His stomach roars but that's not it, nor is it the undesirable smell of himself against his sheets. He swallows down his morning breath and turns his head to find Adam asleep against the windowsill. The windows, themselves, are thrown up, open and he realizes that it's the cold that woke him. He starts and hurls himself out of bed before deciding that maybe, maybe, waking Adam isn't the best idea right now.

But he can't close the window without moving his brother, and what is he doing right next to an open window on the second floor for Jesus Christ's sake?

"Dean," Sam hisses, but his brother doesn't stir immediately. It's only after Sam is thisclose to silently walking over him and slapping him awake that Dean raises his head and realizes something is wrong.

"Adam? Son of a bitch," and Dean moves too quickly for Sam to stop him. Picks up their youngest brother and lays him gently onto the mattress, checking immediately for signs of life. Sam assumes, by the way Dean sags against the bed once more with what looks like relief on his face, Adam is still alive. He shuts the window with trembling hands.

"When did he move?"

"I don't know. I was asleep."

Dean shakes his head and stands, pacing between the window and a mirror that glares silently at Adam's sleeping form. There is nothing that would please him more at the immediate moment than to knock the thing down off the wall and watch it scatter glass shards across the floor, but Dean admits quietly to himself that he doesn't know what will happen when Adam wakes up and maybe he should tread lightly around this. It's not a victory anymore but a minefield into which he has dragged Sam; one more thing that could potentially leave everything he loves rotting, but he just knows that this is Adam.

"We should probably check him out," Sam suggests from where he's folded over himself on the edge of the empty bed.

"Yeah," Dean is quick to agree. "Yeah." And he hesitates in touching Adam but it's passing. He's soon eager to run his fingers down the kid's neck, to feel the warmth in his skin that reminds him of Hellfire, feel the pulse that beats the like the devil's cold laughter. Slow, though, to unzip the unfamiliar jacket that's closed only up to Adam's stomach, and his fingers tremble when he hands the clothing off to Sam.

Sam who urges Dean to just take a deep breath, it's okay, we've got him now and nothing can hurt any of us ever again (to which Dean genuinely laughs and begins to pull the sweater up over Adam's head).

The cuts are startling; the burns are expected; the clear patches of pale skin that are pulled tight around Adam's waning body are refreshing. Dean sucks in a sad breath and hands the undershirt and sweater off to Sam. Reaches down and flicks open the button of his jeans. He shimmies them off of his brother's hips and at first, he doesn't know why Sam makes that small, disgusted noise.

But it clicks because cuts that deep across the insides of Adam's thighs should be deadly. And Dean is no paramedic, but he's seen enough to know.

Those are not old they bleed not, they still glisten at the surface.

"Sam," he gasps and reaches blindly for his brother. His hand connects with Sam's arm and he grabs it, pulling him closer and they both lean in, knocking Adam's knees apart to expose the full brutality to the kid's otherwise unmarred flesh. Nothing else is above his knees but these long gashes, neatly carved and parallel to one another until they diminish quietly into the rosy knobs of his knees. Like meticulous claw marks.

"Something wasn't in here last night, was it?"

"Look at his pants. No blood. It couldn't've been last night," Sam is quick to reason, trying to quell his brother's obvious and growing anger.

Dean stands, shakes his head and punches the closest wall. Sam just lets him go at it with the mumbled curses and the abuse to his already bleeding knuckles until his brother grabs his jacket and heads for the door. "Dean, wait! Where are you—?"

"I'm going into town to see if there's anything unusual going on around here. Look after him. See if you can find anything. Feed him something if he wakes up. Kid is skin and bones."

It's the older brother speaking in Dean that tells Sam just let him go, he needs to do this, just let him go. So he does, flinching when the door slams shut and glancing down at Adam to make sure he hasn't woken. When he finds his little brother still sleeping like the dead, he feels foolish for having even fancied the thought that Dean merely rampaging about the hotel room would have woken him from this unnatural unconsciousness. He has no doubt in his mind that they should check his vitals, but all of the most superficial signs don't align with Adam's comatose state. He's warm, his pulse is idle, and Sam even swears that he can see Adam's lashes fluttering gently against his cheek.

If he didn't know any better, he would consider the young man to be merely sleeping.

He gets up on the bed and wonders if Adam's mind hasn't crumbled under the weight of the memories of the Cage. Who knows how he got out and what tools he had to cope with what he had endured as soon as his feet were touching the cold frost of the earth. He strokes his thumb along Adam's jaw, sucks in a breath when the kid's lips part under the weight of his touch. He resigns his hands back to his lap and stands, knowing that he'll be of more use if he, as Dean had swiftly commanded upon his swift exit, can find any leads to what might have caused those wounds.

Dean sits in the Impala before the hospital for a good five minutes, arms crossed over his chest and eyes fixed on the bush that borders the parking lot. The first two hospitals he visited in Burlington and Lomax were no help at all and the city hall of Gulf Port was almost completely deserted. Only the city administrator and the chief of police had been hanging around, both of whom had helpfully supplied that no, there were not strange happenings going on in this quaint, cold little town, but if he wants to he might visit Gulf Port's own little hospital that, he had assumed, probably isn't more than two measly stories high.

At the surface, he's upset with Adam for showing up in such a Podunk village on the edge of Illinois, hours from any major cities. He's upset with whatever hurt the kid and he's upset with Sam for doing what he said and staying behind rather than coming along like he wishes he would have. He doesn't give himself time to think about what's getting to him beneath the surface.

He slams the Impala's door as hard as he dares before striding up to the hospital in big, stomping steps, the kind that make him feel bigger than his worldly vexations. When he enters, the sweetest, plumpest woman looks up at him from behind a counter and he forces a smile for her, leaning liberally across the counter and providing her his badge.

"I have a few questions for you, ma'am."

"Of course," comes the quick reply, and it takes everything in him not to laugh at the way she almost jumps out of her seat to accommodate the questions he has not yet asked. His mood lightens and he nods appreciatively.

"We've found a young man around here with peculiar wounds. Have there been any strange cases coming in here lately?"

"Oh, just one. Came in battered all over. Scars, burns, cuts, you name it, he had them. Everywhere."

Dean frowns and straightens up a little. "Did he have ID on him?"

"No, sir."

"Can you describe him to me?"

"From what we could tell, he was suffering simply from exhaustion and dehydration. He looked rather abused, though. He was about as tall as you are. Short, blond hair. Blue eyes. Sweet-looking thing, really, you wouldn't know what an ungrateful rat he was from just the look of him."

"Ungrateful—?"

"Yes," she cuts him off quickly, her full lips thinning as her words tighten, "he was in the hospital a few days ago. He mugged one of our nicest nurses here."

"No, no," Dean starts, crossing a line before he even realizes it, "I know this kid. He's sort of a smart-ass sometimes, but he would never," he pleads, because it hurts to hear someone talk about Adam like that. From how little he knows the guy, he knows that Adam's the kid whose mother taught him a lot better than that.

Her gaze melts to haughtily obtrusive. "Well it's no coincidence that Evan got his clothes stolen right off his back walking out the same night that that kid snuck out, is it? I mean, he's wearing dark jeans and a Queen shirt, right? Grey jacket? The only things he didn't take were Evan's shoes. Kid must be walking around barefoot." The similarities are striking and Dean presses on.

"May I speak to Evan?"

"His next shift is tonight. He won't be in until eight."

Dean scrubs a hand down his face and mumbles that he'll return for a statement later. Something strikes him and he looks back up at the woman. "Did the kid have cuts on his legs when he was in here?"

This perplexes her and Dean's patience burns quickly in the time it takes her to switch gears from harsh judgment to concern. "No. Like I said, plenty of damage on his top half, but nothing on his legs."

"Has anyone come in with deep cuts around the insides of their thighs?"

"Deep cuts?"

"Deep cuts."

The woman grabs a stack of post-its and a pen with a fluffy, pink top. Dean closes his eyes in time to not roll them at her. She begins to write something, speaking with intent. "Not here, no. You might want to try the funeral home in Stronghurst." She hands him an address and Dean sags wearily against the counter, mumbling his appreciation.

* * *

><p>"Dean," Sam sighs immediately upon picking up the phone. He pushes himself away from the brittle hotel desk over which he's been hunched for the better part of several hours and turns to check on Adam, still sprawled and resembling the quiet fate of Endymion. "Before you speak, I haven't found anything. There's nothing like what Adam has around here, not even in the nearest cities."<p>

"Yeah, you tell me that now," Dean grumbles on the other end of the line and Sam closes his eyes, scrubbing his hand down his face. "I just visited two funeral homes, three hospitals and the city hall of the town we found Adam in. Nobody's ever heard of anything like the cuts on his leg." Dean hesitates and Sam clears his throat. "Adam was at the local hospital a few days ago. He didn't have the cuts when he was there. He's wearing the clothes of one of the nurses who works at the hospital. How much do you want to bet that Adam-fresh-out-of-the-cage couldn't manage a successful mugging if it meant every misplaced piece in the stupid puzzle of his life being put back together?"

Sam manages a laugh. "That was a pretty nuanced thing to say, Dean." His eyes run over the vast expanse of their baby brother's sprawled body, still mostly unclothed. The wounds are the only thing that stare back at him. "I'm going to say negative. You think whatever dressed him attacked him?"

"Well, it's a start. Figured I'd look a little more into it before coming back. While I'm out, you know? There are bigger cities further out who might know something about this. I've got to burn time before the naked nurse is available for questioning."

"Alright, Dean. Be careful. This isn't just another case," Sam reminds him quietly. Dean's silence is comforting.

"Yeah, I know." And he hangs up before Sam can realize that there's nothing else to say on the matter. He sets the phone aside and turns back to his laptop. The screen is black from disuse and his reflection is clear. He needs a shower and it shows. Closing the computer, Sam stands and ambles quietly across the small room to the bathroom for a shower.

* * *

><p>"He still hasn't woken up."<p>

It's not a question, and Sam turns around just to shake his head because Dean needs to know that this isn't something that can roll off of their shoulders easily. The way Dean looks away quickly is a minute assurance that they're both aware of the dangers swimming in these waters.

"How was the city?"

"Quieter than any normal city. Everything around here is so goddamned quiet," Dean grunts, dropping himself onto the empty bed and taking a moment to breathe. He turns his head to look at Sam and shrugs. "Still got an hour before I've got to be back at the hospital." Turns his eyes to look at Adam. "How's he been?"

"Same as he ever was," Sam sighs, stooping down to his knees beside their brother. Reaches out and lolls Adam's head to the left, then right, searching for any change and halting suddenly when something catches his gaze. "Dean, was this there when we found him?"

Dean jumps up before Sam can finish speaking, following the trail of Sam's finger along Adam's jaw where there is a long, thin cut, speckled with the tarnishing of superficial scrapes. "I don't...know." And Dean's frustration is clear when he straightens up, fists clenched like this could be the difference between life and death for them. "We need to check him again, make sure that we don't miss anything."

Sam, without bothering to assent, begins to turn Adam's limbs this way and that, fingers tracing everywhere they can reach. Dean watches on with arm's crossed, frowning and leaning over as Sam checks his shoulders. "Roll him over."

Without hesitation, Sam sighs and complies, flinching away when the first sight of stark brick-red against pale skin scares him down. He scowls and recognizes it immediately from Lucifer's effect on Nick. Across the dorsal end of Adam's ribs are wide, bloody sores, entire patches of skin marred with the ugly lesions. Sam traces his fingers through the narrow isthmuses of smooth skin between them, and it is not lost on him how much more concentrated the bloody messes become as they get closer to where Michael's wings would have torn Adam to shreds if he hadn't contained him as well as he did.

That night, he almost falls asleep.

Dean does. Sam sees to it that his brother actually gets into bed with Adam if he's going to be so persistent about being there when he wakes up. Sam lays there staring at them. Adam's head lolled to the side where the moonlight from the window can curl cold claws around the contours of his face. Dean's arm secure around their brother's waist, dipping Adam further into the mattress and curving his hips at an aesthetic angle. He sighs and thinks he sees the traces of angelic grace along Adam's svelte limbs, torn only by the steadily increasing amount of bodily wounds choking porcelain beauty that really shouldn't be so intoxicating.

So Sam chalks it up to exhaustion and closes his eyes.

What feels like seconds later, something grabs his wrist and jerks him out of restless sleep. He feels like he's about to puke up his heart and he tries to pull away, kicking legs tangled helplessly in the sheets and Dean, from what he can tell, still asleep in the adjacent bed. Whatever it is persists until they're both lying back against the headboard of Sam's bed, and it takes only a moment to realize that it's not attacking him; it's clinging to him.

"Don't let it," Adam gasps, "don't let them take me back. Don't—no—can't go back." He sounds like he still has hell in his throat and Sam does the first thing he can do. He throws his arms around his brother's battered body and hugs him close.

"Adam," he sobs even though he tried to sound a bit less scared. "Adam, oh my god, Adam, you're alive."

Dean is at the bedside when Sam turns his eyes, and he realizes that Adam's hand is tangled in their eldest brother's shirt collar.

"You won't, let them, no," and Adam's face twists painfully and all the moonlight in the world couldn't save Sam from the way his own stomach twists in disgust. Adam slumps. His hand falls. Dean almost seems to slam the lamp on, and when they roll him off of Sam and onto his back, stark, bloody red rifts are widening along Adam's sides with each heavy breath he takes.

"Adam, you're fine. You're safe here," Sam starts, and Dean just tries to calm him down to keep the fresh injuries from tearing even wider.

"No."

Sam opens his mouth again to speak and Dean just shakes his head without looking at him. Adam gropes at the air in front of Dean's chest before giving up and letting his arm fall back down to the bed. He smiles, teeth bloody, and when Sam pulls his jaw down enough to see in, the blood is gathering in thin rivulets at the corners of his mouth.

"What is it?" Dean's concern is comforting.

"He bit his tongue."

Adam's mouth clicks shut and he smiles. "Not going back to hell. Not until I die." He closes his eyes and nods, nods off because when Dean shakes him, he mumbles something and rolls over, into the pillow. Sam prods at his body until he rolls over a little more and there are no bloodstains on the sheets. All his wounds, though glistening, are dry.

"Jesus christ," Dean mumbles, looking up at Sam. "Jesus christ. He's alive. Jesus."

"Dean," and a soft silence. Heavy threat, eyes on the carpet. "Dean, are you okay?"

"Okay? I'm...I'm fucking spectacular. We haven't found anything around the entire vicinity of Podunk, Illinois, and then he just suddenly wakes up? This is absolutely superb." Dean's mouth is tight, but there is joy in the lines around his eyes. "I remember what you were like when you came out of the cage." He just stares at Adam after that. Sam nods. He continues. "He was there longer."

And yeah, it makes sense that Dean would only now face the reality that finding their brother was the easiest part. It doesn't mean he has any more comforting words in his head, so he sits there without speaking until Dean's head starts lolling to the side, and at that point, he pulls his brother into his bed and vacates to the unoccupied end of the room. The sheets are cold but he has no idea how long nobody has been on them.

And there's something symbolic about the way Adam is arched over Dean when he wakes, arched with strong lights shining through his shoulder blades. Warm eyes watching him, Adam's eyes and Dean's eyes but not the blue and green he expects. Adam's naked body is clear of all abrasions and Dean's hands curl almost all the way around his shoulders, almost slipping into the skin the way Adam's hips are doing to Dean's bare stomach. They're the same, something in his head narrates, but he wakes up before the dream can really hit him.

He looks over at his brothers, the crick in his neck suddenly taking precedence over the way Adam has splayed himself across Dean's breast. Sam sits up and licks his lips. Sees paint peeling on the walls that wasn't the night before. "Hell," he finally says aloud. Dean starts quietly and is looking at him when Sam turns his head. I know what hurts him, sung taciturn in the morning's grey breath. I know what drags him. I know why you love him. "It's Hell that's coming to get him."

"What's in hell," and Dean almost flips them over with the shock of Adam speaking. He smiles weakly at their youngest brother as he raises his head. "Didn't hurt down there." He yawns. "Hurts worse up here."

"Yeah, well, you fell out of a tree." Adam scowls and pushes away from Dean who lets him go with the tenseness of sudden regret. Sam sees it in his muscles all the way up through his shoulders and he thinks of how painful that parting would have been if Dean and Adam were connected as they had been in his dream. He briefly wonders if that's how it felt and he stands.

"Adam, you need to shower and we need to disinfect...well...everything." The youngest Winchester doesn't respond, and Sam can't even tell whether or not he's heard. Dean reaches out to rouse him and freezes halfway through the act. Neither moves and Sam dives forward for them faster than he can think better of it.

"Guys!" and both of their heads snap in his direction. it's passing, but their eyes seem to have startling flecks of gold just until he blinks. "Guys. Are you...alright?"

"Sammy? Yeah, we're fine, why? What's wrong?" And where Dean looks genuinely concerned, Adam gives Sam a sad, knowing look before standing and stumbling towards the bathroom.

* * *

><p>After clearing his throat, "We need to figure out why you're awake," Dean begins carefully, and Adam nods like he actually cares. He's been getting better at pretending over the past couple hours. "Well, why you're awake now when you weren't earlier." Sam glances between them and the second time he looks at Adam, he decides maybe he was mistaken.<p>

He looks less like he cares and more like his shoulders won't hold up his head. He continues to nod idly while Dean stares at the floor, trying to read through the carpet into the words he wants to say. There's a comfort to the silence that Sam feels like he's missing out on, and when he leans back, his brothers lean forward into each other. Unusually close. The kind of close that makes children cry and grown men fidget.

Adam lurches from his seat with a strength that seems birthed from the power of beating wings; he hurriedly throws himself into the bathroom. The dry heaving noises are lost in the sounds of Dean rising and following him onto the cold, uninviting tile, and before either of them can close the door, Sam rushes to figure out what's going on.

And really, something tells him he should have seen it coming, but Dean has Adam sprawled against the floor, and the two are attached at the lips in a way that reminds Sam of the beasts with women's heads and lions' bodies. Adam's fingers are curled in Dean's hood and he's arching up against him like he's going to push him off if he shoves hard enough. There's blood in the toilet.

"Dean, c'mon, like he needs one more thing to send him to hell," Sam grumbles when what he's seeing processes in his head, and Adam pushes Dean off at the first rough words. Stares up at the eldest Winchester for a long moment before closing his eyes and dropping his arms to the floor beside him. Dean shakes him; the kid doesn't stir.

"Jesus, thanks for that, Sammy," Dean spits and digs his arms under Adam's body to carry him back to a bed.

* * *

><p>Sun sweeps silently across the room, and Sam has spent another night nodding off to the sight of Dean hovering over an unresponsive Adam. The last time Sam's eyes were open, the stars were innumerable and the moon was still keeping steady vigil over the window of their room. Now, the soft wisps of morning fog are lit by the white light cried quietly from the sky. He realizes he must have slept.<p>

"Shit."

Sam is up in a few seconds, eyes wide as Dean's booming voice shakes to his very heart. He tries to translate his fuming brother, but when he realizes that the occupants of their room are limited to only themselves, he catches on quickly.

"Where'd he go?"

"You think I would be looking if I fucking knew?" Dean throws open the window and sweeps his gaze across the parking lot. The Impala is still there. "He can't've gone far on foot."

A voice, painful and pulsing in the back of Sam's mind coldly quips, Could if he sank back to where you left him. "Shit, Dean, you think he's back in Hell?" he gasps, grasping his head and falling to his knees as the voice reverberates through his body.

"No. No, he couldn't be. He's..."

"Dean, Michael's still down there."

"No," Dean shakes his head, and Sam wants to argue, wants to mention that he knows where Michael is, but Dean looks up at him with his mouth twisted in distaste and his eyes flecked with gold. "No, he's not.

"He's walking here with Adam."


End file.
